Those who play leaked game builds are “choosing to ruin their own experience,” says Fergusson

Gears 3 executive producer Rod Fergusson has compared the leaked build of the game, which was released on torrent sites early last month, to a person showing how a magic trick is accomplished before performing it.

Speaking in an interview with Edge, Fergusson said the leak was “frustrating”, and “saddening,” for the team working on the game, and while the build wasn’t “truly representative,” of the final game, it still had the potential to ruin the experience for gamers.

“The leak was a pretty old build so it’s not truly representative of what the final game’s going to be,” he said. “The one nice thing about a leak on Xbox is that it’s somewhat limited. A PC leak is much more devastating so basically everybody in the world could play it if they wanted to, whereas an Xbox leak requires certain modifications, which means at least the audience is smaller. And yeah, the videos can get out there.

“But at the end of the day, it’s people choosing to ruin their own experience, which I don’t completely get. I get people going, ‘oh no, I just watched this thing on YouTube and it’s totally given away something’. And I go, ‘well, why did you go looking and why did you watch it?’

“So for us, it’s frustrating. It’s saddening when people have worked so hard and we’ve been building toward September 20 and then you have this stuff go out, especially going out in an early state. This was a build from before even the beta. It’s just sort of sad the way people will be seeing the game for the first time is not the way that we intended and not the best. So we’re extremely diligent about getting that stuff taken down and issued a call to the fans to not perpetuate it because it’s not helping anybody to perpetuate that. And just keeping track of those who do. I don’t think everybody’s always aware of the potential repercussions of those types of actions so it’s just a matter of being diligent.”

Fergusson goes on to say it’s tempeting for a person excited for the game to take “a peek behind the curtain,” into the development and while he doesn’t understand why someone would want the final experience possibiluy ruined for them, he said Epic never underestimates its fans.

“ When I look at being a fan of certain things, I want to consume them in their best form first, and then understand how they were made,” he offered. “Otherwise it has the potential to lessen the experience, lessen the impact. If someone said, ‘ok, before I do this magic trick, let me show you how it works. So she’s not actually floating. There’s a cable here holding her up, and I’m going to move the ring around it this way. Ok, now let me do the magic trick and I want you to be astounded!’

“I love the fact that they’re hungry for information. I love that they’re eager and I want to keep them interested. But at the same time I don’t want that eagerness to hurt the experience for themselves.”